Topical and Tropical

Rants, Raves, and Other Mindless Babble

Take Care of Your Files

Posted on February 20, 2009 in Design | comment bubble 3 Comments »

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who don’t manage their files well. Now I completely understand that everyone is different, and everyone has their own system that works for them, but seriously, do you need 100 icons on your desktop? At this very moment I have all my files divided into 2 different folders on my desktop, one is for all things associated with my Human Radiator brand, and the other is a folder containing all the work I do for Notre Dame. Inside the Notre Dame folder I have projects folders that I try to keep to less than 700MB in size, for the specific reason of easily being able to back them up to CD. Inside those project folders, all of my projects are labeled with name and the current year. That way I have an immediate sense as to when the project was started. On a sidenote, lately I have been adding a project number in front of the project name that corresponds with the project number that was assigned in our time/project management system.

Drilling down further, almost all of my project folders have the same core set of interior folders … assets, docs, and mocks. Inside the assets folder is where I keep all digital materials such as photography, iStock downloads, Illustrator or InDesign files, etc., that I use to create the mockup. Documents such as information architectures, wireframes, and written content fill the docs folder and are separated into appropriate sub-folders. Finally there is the mocks folder. Scanning the mocks folder you will typically find a subfolder labeled _Currents that houses all the most recent mockups for a client. The reason for the underscore is so that it is always at the top of the list. Also in that folder you will find folders labeled Round 1, Round 2, and so forth, that serve as a way for me to version my work, in case a client would ever come back to me and say, “Can we go back to 3 versions ago?” Finally, in this same mocks folder, I tend to keep a folder named scraps, where I typically put concepts and sketches that I didn’t think would work for the particular project I was working on, but may work for someone else.

The last thing about file management that I want to mention has to do specifically with how design files are handled in Photoshop. When I start a new web design project, the very first thing I do is set my 960px wide boundaries. To do this, I have a preset 960px wide by 100px tall box generated by Photoshop, I make it an obnoxious red or green color, I drag and drop it in my document, and then I strike a couple of guides. To complete that process I then create a new layer folder with the name “Borders”, throw the 960 block in it, and hide the visibility. From there, it’s a crapshoot when it comes to what objects I place where and what order the layers are in, but one thing always remains the same. When I create a new layer in Photoshop, the very first thing I do is label it. Nothing frustrates me more when I take a handoff from a fellow designer and all I see when I open the layers palette is a stack of layers named “Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3, and oh yeah, Layer 54 has an adjustment layer applied to it. Good luck finding it.” That system is inefficient and causes unnecessary stress for a fellow designer or developer who have to decipher the mysterious code that was established. Once I have the mockup complete, and all my layers have appropriate names, and I then group them as if they were a legend for the mockup, so developers can read it like a book from the top down when they are chopping it up and coding it. And finally, unless you want other designers and developers to pull their hair out as they watch the spinning pinwheel of death, please use adjustment layers and complex masks carefully, as they add a ton of file weight, and more often than not, the effect can be achieved the exact same way without using them.

Morale of the story … take care of your files. The system that I have developed for myself seems to be working quite well and I can’t remember the last time I had a complaint from a developer because my files were difficult to interpret. If I can prevent frustration simply by taking a second and adding a layer name or collecting things in a folder then by all means I am going to do it.